That's the mile stone just passed of American troops killed in Aghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan — With the surge of American troops over and the Taliban still a potent threat, American generals and civilian officials acknowledge that they have all but written off what was once one of the cornerstones of their strategy to end the war here: battering the Taliban into a peace deal.

The once ambitious American plans for ending the war are now being replaced by the far more modest goal of setting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among themselves in the years after most Western forces depart, and to ensure Pakistan is on board with any eventual settlement.

A war that couldn't be won. Or should that be, 'another war that couldn't be won.

Those that called for the Afghan and Iraq fiasco's should be held to account.

Except Blair, who, as I've always said is mad, stark raving bonkers.

After all, Mr Blair has always been obsessed by his place in the history books; not for nothing did he claim that he felt ‘the hand of history’ on his shoulder.

Given that his period in office included the shameful debacle of the Iraq war, the growth of a gigantic housing bubble and the worst excesses of the City financiers, you might think that Mr Blair would prefer to spend the next few years in quiet retirement.

But one well-informed observer, the former Foreign Secretary and SDP leader Lord Owen, believes that Tony Blair would find that impossible.

Obsessed: Blair has always been consumed by his place in the history books, saying once that he felt the 'hand of history' on his shoulderIn a new edition of his book The Hubris Syndrome, David Owen — who before entering politics was a specialist in neurology and psychiatry at St Thomas’ Hospital in London — argues that the architect of New Labour has fallen victim to a pathological obsession with his own political importance and moral righteousness.

As Lord Owen sees it, Mr Blair’s conduct after he won power in 1997 formed a ‘pattern of hubristic behaviour .?.?. which could legitimately be deemed to constitute a medically recognised syndrome’.

This ‘hubris syndrome’, as he calls it, is not the same as ordinary arrogance. Most politicians have an arrogant streak; even Lord Owen was never renowned for his modesty.

But pathologically hubristic politicians, according to Lord Owen, have ‘a narcissistic propensity to see the world primarily as an arena in which they can exercise power and seek glory’. They have a ‘disproportionate concern with image and presentation’, and ‘a messianic manner of talking about what they are doing’.

They identify ‘themselves with the State to the extent that they regard the outlook and interests of the two as identical’. They have ‘excessive confidence in their own judgment and contempt for the advice or criticism of others’. Luck: Blair faced some very feeble Tory opponents in John Major, William Hague which facilitated his election winsThey believe that instead of being accountable to the court of ordinary public opinion, they are accountable only to ‘History or God’, and that ‘in that court they will be vindicated’. And to cap it all, they are so obsessed with their moral vision that they completely lose interest in the ‘nuts and bolts of policy’ — which inevitably means disaster.